It seems everywhere you go online these days you are blitzed with remarkable before and after pictures promoting some instant weight loss product. One such product that seems to be everywhere these days is the body wrap. Once only something you could have purchased in expensive salons, online companies now promise you even more spectacular results for a fraction of the cost of a salon treatment. Suddenly wrap parties are spreading like wildfire across America, usually promoted by events pages in social networking sites like Facebook. Here, at these wrap parties, women wear the wraps, take before and after pics and measurements, and then fall all over themselves for what is usually described as “magical” and “phenomenal” results. But if these wraps really do deliver on all these unbelievable promises, what in the world are in these wraps?

The most common and well renowned body wrap at this time is known as the It Works Ultimate Body Applicator, but more commonly known as “that crazy wrap thing”. This wrap was invented by a well-respected and highly acknowledged scientist by the name of Luis Mujares. It turns out that Mujares, also a well renowned herbalist, more or less stumbled upon this incredible formula on the quest to cure skin cancer. Once the “side effects” of the wraps were fully noticed, which for most people involved substantial and almost immediate inch loss, the wrap was quickly patented and eventually sold to a company called It Works as a health and beauty product. This body wrap quickly became the flagship product for the entire company, finally getting full exposure in recent years through the power of social media.

So how exactly does this body wrap work? Well, it apparently works on reducing the overall size of fat cells. You see overweight people are not larger because they contain more fat cells, they are larger because their fat cells have become enlarged and inflamed. In fact, scientists now claim that a single fat cell can grow to be approximately 1,000 times its original size. So the all-natural and herbal ingredients contained within the body wrap work together to promote a process called Lipolysis. This literally means “fat-breaking”. The plant extracts and botanical ingredients get into the fat cell and chop up the large fat molecules into smaller ones, which are now allowed to exit the cell. They are then burned up as energy somewhere else in the body. They are also flushed out of the system by drinking lots of water while wearing the wrap.

Now there will always be skeptics and naysayers out there who will assert that the claims made by It Works are far too good to be true. No body wrap or herbal supplement can ever cause you to shed inches in minutes, can it? Nevertheless, this crazy body wrap movement continues to gain momentum, and the web keeps getting flooded with incredible testimonials and amazing before and after pictures. People will always be looking for a quick fix to whatever it is that ails them, and these wraps are definitely no exception. How long this viral movement will last is anybody’s guess, but if the pictures and reviews keep flooding the net the way they have, we might never hear the end of this. Who knows, maybe I’ll even end up at a wrap party this weekend.